While I may soon need another source, right now I’m glad I use Twitter. Today, I saw a tweet from @ToddGilmore that mentioned Web 3.0. It was in the context of leaders learning to use social media, but that’s all I could figure out in terms of defining “Web 3.0.”
To arrive at a definition for Web 3.0, we should start by defining Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Web 1.0 was the beginning of the Internet. Examples included the type of website that one might have posted as a school assignment in the early 1990s. It typically followed the format (and included the phrase) “Hi, my name is (Your Name Here.) This is my website about Topic X” immediately followed by what was essentially an article about Topic X. The information was often accompanied by a graphic (or several) and a primitive MIDI (music) file playing in the background. I may be exaggerating a bit, but that’s the clearest example I can think of.
Web 2.0 is what a lot of people have come to use the Internet for now. It’s the interactive websites that allow us to share the information about ourselves and the world that we might have used to create Web 1.0 (or new information.) Examples include Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, etc.
Likewise, Web 3.0 is an extension of the interactive nature of the Internet that is developing through Web 2.0. Many experts say that it will be focused on and tailored to the individual. It will most likely have an artificial intelligence-like component now referred to as “the semantic web” with which people can search in human terms such as questions and requests as opposed to keywords, as well as a great deal of personalization and even more mobility than there is now.
New Fact: Web 3.0 is the next wave of Internet advancements. It is expected to be user-centered, more human-like, and highly portable.
There is a new buzzword floating around the Internet the last year. Just when marketers and techies were beginning to get a good feel for the Internet, philosophizing trend predictors begin to talk about the next trend in Web technology. There is much controversy about 3.0, with due reason. From all the dissonant voices there is a general consensus about the definition of 3.0. This new technology is being termed Web 3.0. Most folks are familiar with Web 2.0, a term coined in 2004 as a marketing term. To understand Web 3.0 one must understand Web 2.0, and Web ’1.0′.
Web 1.0 is not a definition that was ever used, except as a term to differentiate Web 2.0. 1.0 would be the initial inception of the World Wide Web. The aim of the WWW was to make large amounts of information widely available. With that, it gave rise to the big bad commercial Internet. Remember the dot com mania of the 1990′s? The natural evolution of the Web leads to 2.0. The hallmark of 2.0 is social networking and interactivity. These new trends begat new types of advertising and marketing, such as viral marketing. 2.0 is typified by such sites as http://www.myspace.com and various blog sites. Web 3.0 is much more complex to explain than these previous stages of Web development.
Many refer to Web 3.0 as the Semantic Web. This would be the first step necessary to get 3.0 on track and in fact, a subset of 3.0. The Semantic Web is already a trend being put into play by many top companies. Semantic ties together words and phrases to other relevant words and phrases. For example if you searched for “orchid” the Web would know that “plant” or “gardening” are related words and this too would show up and vice versa. Companies like http://www.amazon.com can give you recommendations based on your search criteria. This is a part of the Semantic Web. Taking this a giant leap forward is the goal of 3.0, artificial intelligence. AI is not at all like what would be portrayed in the media and apocalyptic Hollywood movies. It is not sinister. AI just means the Internet would think more like human beings.
John Markoff (2007) of The New York Times says 3.0 would make the Web “less of a catalogue and more of a guide” making functions on the web that can “reason in a human fashion”. Ironically, some people already use the Web as if it was a database versus the social construct that it is presently. The data will be tied together instead of being an island unto itself. Looking at the idea of a 3.0 Web is like gazing into a crystal ball at the future, except that it is a projection based on trends that are taking place now which are very real. It is hard to believe that the groundwork for 3.0 is actually taking place now in a major way. This, according to John Borland (2007), is because it has “been hidden in big companies and research institutes”. It is very much present however and is not going anywhere. Even the US government is taking stock and beginning to build intelligent technology! This is because artificial intelligence would take much of the time-consuming work searchers presently encounter to find what they need.
This technology has huge implications for the future of the Web, as well as other aspects of our life. Author Pete Morris believes it could include
* Microsoft and My Space reinventing the telephone
* Nokia looking to do Wi-Fi phones
* Getting paid read your e-mails
* The government starting to police virtual worlds
Morris also says that in order to achieve 3.0 would mean “the renewal of the Web’s key index – the essential data that is catalogued by search engines”. As for the future, we may even leave our purchasing decisions to our computer! Heidi Dawley believes that in the future our world will be “seen in three screens – the mobile, TV, and computer”. We currently see ads in terms of behavioral and demographic marketing but in the future it will be more of a “predictive model”. (Dawley 2007)
Web 3.0 is not without its critics. One of the best arguments out there is from a recent blog by Len Bullard (2007). He believes 3.0 will not be AI based but will have to address the problems of 2.0′s interactivity. Web 3.0, according to him, should be a security-based web. This needs to happen regardless on the back end of the web, but it should not define 3.0, besides the fact 3.0 is already picking up inertia and cannot be stopped. Web 3.0 is inevitable and will be an aide to all of humanity that uses modern technology. That is, unless you live in the bush.
In my last article, I talked a little about what web 3.0 is. In this one, I would like to talk a little about the technology aspect of Web 3.0 and see if I can paint a small picture of where it is headed, but before I do that let us look at how to define it:
1. Universality to be used for every browser. 2. Mobility, each type of printer hardware. 3. Accessibility, web standards, application solution, software SaaS.
A few characteristics of Web 3.0 would be web-based solutions. (ASP, SaaA, Software, Application, the webmaster, users, DataBase server and Microformats)
Graphically characteristics: user(s) communities, sites outer linking between each other, open source and hardware layer independence, just to name a few.
Here is the list of Web 3.0 users: Artificial Intelligence Automated reasoning Cognitive architecture Composite applications Distributed computing Knowledge representation Ontology (Computer Science) Recombinant text Scalable vector graphics Semantic web
If you didn’t understand all the terms just mentioned, don’t worry for right now because the average person will never be involved in setting up the infrastructure of Web 3.0. However, you will be using some type of this technology in the future if you plan on using the web.
People think computers are getting smarter. It is just that people are programming them in such a way that it is gathering more and more information and is used in a way that we think the computer is smarter than humans.
In the context of Web 3.0, inference engines will be combining the latest innovations from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field together with domain-specific ontologies (created as formal or informal ontologies, by, say, Wikipedia, as well as others), domain inference rules, and query structures to enable deductive reasoning on the machine level.
The term transforming the web into a database has been kicked around for several years but it looks like Web 3.0 is the word. There was another term emerged “Data Web” but we will see if this one is allowed. Only time will tell.
Let’s talk a little about RRS technology. It will allow information to be transferred to almost any other website like Myindiatims and IGoogle. These sites will let users create their own personal home page and the RRS feed can draw its content so the user can select much of it.
As you can see, technology is rapidly advancing. Why not advance with it!
